Still More Not-So-Natural-Born Google Killers

by Aaron Goldman, VP Marketing & Strategic Partnerships
Appeared in MediaPost’s Search Insider

My kill count is reaching Jack Bauer status. I started by slaying four would-be Google killers. Then I targeted three more contenders before crowning just one. Today, I’ll crush even more potential killers than that. Unlike other pundits who consider emerging search engines to be challengers to the Google throne, my focus is on companies, individuals, and institutions that stand in the way of Google reigning supreme in the $500 global advertising universe — and in case you couldn’t tell, I don’t think any search engine is going to do that.

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Even More Not-So-Natural-Born Google Killers

by Aaron Goldman
Appeared in MediaPost’s Search Insider

Let’s turn our focus to three more potential Google killers and see if they have what it takes to derail the Big G. Again, my focus here is not on newfangled search engines. Google’s global search share isn’t in jeopardy nor is its search ad revenue — despite what comScore might say next. Rather, the true Google killers are companies, individuals, and institutions that stand in the way of Google and the $500 billion pot of gold at the end of the global ad rainbow.
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Not-So-Natural-Born Google Killers

by Aaron Goldman
Appeared in MediaPost's Search Insider

It’s become quite fashionable to speculate about companies that could unseat Google. As I write this, there are nearly 100,000 matches on Google for the query “Google Killer.” Not one to miss a fashion trend, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon here.
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Open Wide and Say Yahhhhhhoo

by Aaron Goldman
Appeared in MediaPost’s Search Insider

Having just shed 1,000 employees in an attempt to trim costs and with a possible Microsoft acquisition casting a shadow over Sunnyvale, it would be hard to fault Yahoo for just trying to keep its various business units fully operational. But Yahoo’s not taking the lumps handed to it by the market lying down. Showing great resilience, Yahoo is pressing ahead with a series of innovative initiatives designed to improve user-experience across its properties and create compelling opportunities for the online media ecosystem.While the scope of these various projects is diverse, they can all be tied together under Yahoo’s continual push to “open up.”

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Before Our Very Eyes: What’s Google Up To?

by Aaron Goldman
Appeared in MediaPost's Search Insider

Lost in the shuffle of a heavy news week that included Yahoo spurning Microsoft’s advances was this eye-popping bit of tid — Google is now running video ads on SERPs. The New York Times broke the story, reporting that “on Thursday, Google started testing video ads on some pages of search results.” The article includes excerpts from an interview with Marissa Mayer in which she discloses the move and provides the rationale behind it.
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Will Paid Search Go The Way of CPA?

by Aaron Goldman
Appeared in MediaPost's Search Insider
In my last column, I raised the question, “Will CPA Become the Default Pricing Model for Paid Search?” The topic stemmed from a panel I participated in at the recent Digital Media Measurement and Pricing Summit. My first instinct was to write CPA off as nice in theory but “never gonna happen.” In turn, I feared my conference session would turn out to be the “shortest panel ever.”I’m happy to report that my dialogue with fellow panelist Jason Clement of Neo@Ogilvy was bountiful and we used the entire 45 minutes allotted. However, the net-net as far as CPA goes is that we landed somewhere between “nice in theory” and “never gonna happen.”
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Can You Really Learn Search Marketing at a Conference?

By Aaron Goldman
MediaPost’s Search Insider

With another Search Engine Strategies in the books and the biannual Search Insider Summit going down in Park City this week, I've got my mind on search shows – and search shows on my mind. More specifically, I've been thinking about just how much people actually learn at these conferences.

Fellow Search Insider Mark Simon put in his two cents on SES Chicago in Monday's column. While I don't fully agree with his assessment of the show — overall, I do think it was "worth the trouble" — I also don't fully disagree with many of his points. So, rather than engage in the tit for tat back and forth that Mark and I often do in this space, I want to focus on one specific aspect of SES and conferences in general — practical search marketing education.

At SES Chicago, I had the pleasure of manning the CIMA booth, which gave me a chance to meet and interact with fellow attendees and exhibitors. With this topic in mind for my column, I tried to ask as many people as I could if they had learned anything practical at the conference.

The answers I got were all over the place, ranging from "yes" to "no" to "define practical."

Not surprisingly, first-time SES attendees seemed to come away with more tangible learning that did the regulars on the trade show circuit. But that's not to say the old-timers were disappointed by the show. They just had very different reasons for attending — namely, keeping their fingers on the pulse of the market and networking with fellow search professionals.

Search marketing education and training has been a hot topic for just about as long as search marketing has been around. The first wave of search professionals was largely self-taught. Over time, resources such as books, trade pubs, and certification programs surfaced to meet the demand for focused training.

But can you really learn search from a book or an online tutorial? Sure, you can learn how to use a search engine UI or best practices for copy testing. But can you really learn search without interacting with professionals? There's just so little that's "by the book" when it comes to search marketing.

It's this crucial face-to-face aspect of "learning search" that spawned trade shows like SES, SIS, and SMX (Search Marketing Expo.) As more and more companies build out search departments, the most popular form of training seems to be sending people to conferences.

But are trade shows really the answer? Can you learn enough about search marketing at a conference or two (or even five or ten) to develop (and maintain) the skills necessary to manage a robust holistic paid and natural search program?

I suppose the answer is relative. To effectively manage search programs of a certain scale, it may be sufficient to read a book, get your Google cert and hit up your closest trade show. But if I'm a mid-sized or large company spending millions of dollars search marketing, I don't know that I'd trust my search budget to someone whose training came in the form of note-taking from a bunch of self-promoting presenters who think that being on a panel at a conference makes them the next Danny Sullivan — yet are too afraid to share any real tips for fear of losing their competitive edge. (OK, that may be a bit harsh — not all sessions at search shows feature shameless self-promoters. In fact, many of them include genuine search experts who are willing to disclose their success stories — but I think you get my point.)

One thing I can tell you with certainty is that at my company, we don't rely on trade shows to do our training. We've spent a good deal of time and money to develop a thorough orientation program that enables all our new hires to learn the ins and outs of search marketing through practical training led by seasoned professionals (I know, I know — who's the shameless self-promoter now?)

Our program includes a mix of classroom and on-the-job training and requires all employees to successfully complete two levels of internal certification exams. We have a fully dedicated staff member responsible for the planning and implementation of our training, but have the individual courses (over 50 of them) taught by subject matter experts from within the organization.

To augment our internal training, we require our account strategy, project management, production, and data analytics teams to achieve certifications from each of the major search engines. And our ongoing training includes the requisite book reading, trade pubs — and, of course, attending conferences.

Now I'm not saying that this depth of training is required for everyone looking to learn the ropes of search marketing. But I know our clients, who are primarily Fortune 500 marketers, feel more comfortable that their budgets are in good hands than they would if the extent of our team's training was limited to trade shows.

Bottom line? I firmly believe that search conferences provide value to attendees. I just think the value is more-so in the participation than the education.

It's in this spirit that I eagerly anticipate this week's Search Insider Summit. By the time this column is published, I will be en route to Park City, where I look forward to sharing challenges and successes with fellow professionals, cultivating relationships with key business partners — and, yes, actually learning a thing or two about search marketing.

As always, I promise to recap the top buzzwords from SIS in my next column, as I have for each of the last two summits.

Is Your URL Hot or Not?

By Aaron Goldman
MediaPost’s Search Insider

I have become obsessed — some (namely, my wife) might say possessed — by URLs. I can’t watch TV, drive down the highway, or look at search results without fixating on URLs. And I certainly can’t let a URL go by without comment.

My Name is URL
To satisfy my URL-petite, I recently started a blog — GoodURLBadURL.com — showing pictures of URLs I encountered, with a label of Good or Bad based on the URL that was chosen and the way it was displayed.

You should see the looks I get (again, namely from my wife) when I interrupt TV commercials (interrupting commercials - now there’s an oxymoron!) to take pictures of advertiser URLs or when I pull over to the shoulder to zoom in on a billboard and fire off a couple shots.

What Have I Been Smoking?
As Rory Gallagher put it, “don’t know where I’m going, don’t know where I’ve been.” I can’t explain why I’m so affected by URLs or why I feel the need to air my URL grievances to the world.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to parlay this URL-addiction into an AdSense machine. For now though, it’s enough to simply scratch my URL itch and give me an outlet for URL-venting that does not require my wife feigning interest (I should point out that she’s gotten really good at separating the good URLs from the bad and the ugly.)

As for what brought on this case of URL-itis, I’m pretty sure it has to do with my day job in search marketing.

What Do URLs and Search Have in Common?
With traditional search sponsored listings, marketers have a few short lines of text to make an impact so every last character counts. The same goes for URLs.

In a world where we’re inundated with thousands of marketing messages each day, it’s tough to stand out from the clutter. Marketers need a succinct, impactful message to really resonate. Ditto for URLs. Whether it be on a SERP or at the end of a 30-second spot, marketers have just a few seconds to make an impression.

And we know that offline media drives search activity. Research has shown that print and TV ads drive consumers online to search for more information. Of course, one of the main reasons for this is that people don’t know (or don’t remember) the URL of the advertiser for the product or service that piqued their interest.

Are Good URLs Bad for Search?
One might say that those of us in search marketing stand to benefit from advertisers using bad URLs. After all, confused consumers create a confluence of queries (say that ten times fast!)

But there are two key reasons I don’t think we need to lose any sleep over marketers waking up to the power of a good URL.

The first is that no matter how memorable your URL is, there is still a significant percentage of the online population that can’t (or doesn’t bother to) differentiate between an address bar and a search box. There’s an anecdotal stat I once heard that I love (and repeat often to marketers who don’t think they need to “do search”) — two of the top ten queries on Google and Yahoo each month are “Google.com” and “Yahoo.com.” Brilliant!

The second is that, quite simply, most of the good URLs are already taken. And, no matter how many great URLs might be available with alternate top-level domains (.biz, .name, etc.) no marketer wants to touch those (and for good reason — it’s hard enough to remember what comes before .com.)

What Makes a Good URL?
On GoodURLBadURL.com I list some best practices for marketing professionals who, like me, take this URL thing seriously. Here are the Dos and Don’ts I’ve come up with for selecting and promoting URLs. I’d love to hear yours, too — either in the Search Insider Blog or the comments section on my site.

Dos
1. CapitalizeTheFirstLetterOfEachWord.
2. UseDifferentColorsOrBoldToHelpEachWordStandOut.
3. Whenever possible, use YourBrandName.com.
4. If .com is not available, use YourBrandName.net.
5. If .com and .net are taken, find a new brand name. Seriously.
6. Use YourSlogan.com when running an integrated media campaign.
7. Use subdomains when driving people deeper than your homepage — e.g. Product.YourBrandName.com.

Don’ts
1. Don’t include www. We know to go to the World Wide Web to find you.
2. Don’t include http://. If your audience isn’t Web-savvy enough to know where to type the URL, you shouldn’t have a Web site.
3. don’tusealllowercase (canyoureallytellwhereonewordendsandthenextbegins?)
4. DITTOFORALLUPPERCASE
5. No-hyphens/or slashes.
6. Don’t use acronyms, abbreviations, or numbers unless your brand is widely known as such.
7. Don’t bury your URL at the bottom of a billboard. I’m the only nerd driving around with a 4x zoom lens to find URLs.

Happy URLs to You
Hopefully I’ve raised your URL-IQ a bit or at least made you URL-aware. What you do with this newfound URL wisdom is up to you. For your sake, though (and the sake of your family) I encourage you not to get too fixated on finding or creating the perfect URL — it’s not healthy.

As for those of you focused solely on search marketing who might be thinking that URLs don’t matter since your Web site is always one easy click away (and, thus, people don’t need to remember it) — I wouldn’t overlook the importance of getting every last advantage you can on a crowded SERP or in a content/contextual environment. Searchers are finicky, and even the slightest use of CAPS can get eyeballs away from competitor’s placements. Not to mention, if you’ve got a bad URL and want people to skip the SERP next time and return to your site directly, your only hope is that they bookmark it.

And now I’ll close with the Dixie Chicks classic — Goodbye URL.